One hour of code, Two Students with Apps! (Guest Post)

So yesterday I was fortunate enough to go to London to the launch of the UK hour of code. I was invited down to present coding to a group of students in a flash mob style. It was very exciting and over 50 students went away with some coding experience. I really enjoyed the day and there will be a follow up later on today about the day.

Whilst I was away from my school, Uppingham Community College, two of my students were completing apps for teachers. To my surprise, when I got back, my inbox had two published Touch Develop apps which could be used in other teachers lessons. We must remember when these students are learning to code, we need to give them purpose. In life, have we ever done things just for the sake of doing it? We do it so that we can apply it. Giving these students real school problem gives them a voice and allows them to be part of something bigger. The touch develop scheme of work used for this has now flipped the learning and put the control in the students hands. This is why two of these apps were able to be finished without me even being in the room. Congratulations guys!

The first app was developed by 13 year old William Rhodes. He is in year 8 and he produced an app last year which made the windows store. It was a P.E G.C.S.E application which helped P.E teachers with examining Muscles. The students could use it as a revision guide. Since this was released it has received over 300 downloads, more feedback than I could ever give him. This is fantastic! Click on the image or click on this Link to download it from the windows store.

His recent app was something which was suggested by his history teacher Mrs Ballance. She wanted an app which would help students investigate the Emily Davison Mystery. She was a lady in the history curriculum who had died, however there were a lot of mysterious circumstances around her death. The idea of the application is that you can click on the evidence pieces and it will tell you some information about the events around it. It is quite fun and you can swipe the screen to clear it. Click on the image or click here to download this from the Windows store.

Our second app was developed by 12 year old Evan Jones. He is also in year and he produced an app after speaking to history teachers. The idea of this app was that students could find out about famous figures in history. So many people forget important facts about people such as Queen Victoria and Henry The VIII. This app was developed to be used as a reference piece and will help students in lower years with revision or homework pieces. Click on the image or click on this link to download it from the Windows store.

Both of these apps are now in the windows store and I look forward to showing some more applications near the end of the week…… I hear that there is one girl doing a Korean application!

Are you taking part in the hour of code!? Click here to find some of our resources or go to http://uk.code.org and sign up all of your classes now. Give students a taste of what it’s like to code and maybe even take part yourself!